I worked for Olivetti in Milan and Ivrea the mid/late 80s. In particular, that was before the wall came down.
When I landed at Malpensa in Milan for the first time, I noticed there was an Aeroflot airliner parked on the tarmac. This seemed odd to me. Why would someone want to fly from Milan to the USSR?
Olivetti was a massive (at the time) paternal Italian company. It had a department called Gestione Varie, miscellaneous management, which handled various things including vacations and sports programs for Olivetti employees. Among the many vacation packages offered were very reasonably priced summer vacations to Leningrad.
> I worked for Olivetti in Milan and Ivrea the mid/late 80s.
Really interesting, you're the first I meet that has. Olivetti still has a stellar reputation in Italy, disliked by other enterpreneurs and (so they say) loved by his employees. What's sure is that the work conditions were really progressive and I think still unparalleled today, at least in Italy.
Do you have any anecdote or interesting fact to share about your time there?
The typewriter factory in Ivrea was ... a typewriter factory. Yeah, I worked on compilers but the building still built typewriters. I was there for a month before I was "allowed" to go to lunch by myself for fear of getting lost.
The main hotel in town, the Hotel La Serra, is shaped like a ... typewriter.
The Brigate Rosse was a threat when I was there and Adriano Olivetti was very afraid of them. You'd never see him. If you drove at night you were likely to be pulled over by the Carabinieri and have a machine gun stuck in your stomach while they figured out who you were. Everyone was on edge.
But it was a cool time. Ivrea was a company town and I think if I wanted to dial the Olivetti operator from my apartment I dialed 6. But taking a shower meant getting up at 4am so that there would be enough water pressure.
When I landed at Malpensa in Milan for the first time, I noticed there was an Aeroflot airliner parked on the tarmac. This seemed odd to me. Why would someone want to fly from Milan to the USSR?
Olivetti was a massive (at the time) paternal Italian company. It had a department called Gestione Varie, miscellaneous management, which handled various things including vacations and sports programs for Olivetti employees. Among the many vacation packages offered were very reasonably priced summer vacations to Leningrad.